Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness” • Hacker News Board

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#261

Post by rectang » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

siliconc0w wrote: post #256

Not defending McClure but it's worth noting sexual assault and 'unwanted touching' are different problems that require different solutions. Any classification system used here should probably differentiate the two. When you combine them you suggest they're the same which does a disservice to those who have been sexually assaulted (defined as assault with/on a sexual organ). The low-fidelity of language here confuses…

> (defined as assault with/on a sexual organ).

That's not the definition of "sexual assault". It varies by jurisdiction, and has been discussed extensively elsethread. "Unwanted touching" and "sexual assault" overlap. More important than anatomy is consent.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#262

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:47 AM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #222

The mass flagging / censoring of comments people disagree with below seems a little petty, I'm curious what the original posts are. I'd rather hear a dumb opinion and make my own choice.

Anybody who wants to can see all the original posts by setting 'showdead' to 'yes' in their profile.

Outright deletion of comments (or comment text) is comparatively rare and always done by authors themselves.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#263

Post by gizmo686 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:48 AM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #222

The mass flagging / censoring of comments people disagree with below seems a little petty, I'm curious what the original posts are. I'd rather hear a dumb opinion and make my own choice.

In your profile settings you can set showdead to true.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#264

Post by unabletocomply » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:49 AM UTC

throwaway055 wrote: post #200

emmab wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking permission before touching people, and not arguing when they say no goes a long way. Want to be able to touch someone without asking every time? Ask them permission for that! "Hey is it ok if I touch your arms and back without asking in the future?"

> Want to be able to touch someone without asking every time? Ask them permission for that! "Hey is it ok if I touch your arms and back without asking in the future?" Sorry but this is just absurd. Courtship doesn't (and will never) work that way. Proposing that standard for human contact implies a lot of negative things about how all of us have conducted our relationships, about how all of our families and parents m…

It does apparently for robots. Or, should I say, people who seem to be utterly robotic in their interactions with people.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#265

Post by pvg » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:51 AM UTC

monfrere wrote: post #257

pvg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be correct to say that these two factors are what make McClure's behavior inappropriate? No, it would not be, at all. "At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me,"

I don't know if anyone will believe me that I'm asking in good faith. But I still think that sentence, as written, could describe a wide range of situations. If it went like: A: Firmly: "You need to leave. Now." B: Shoves A's body multiple times until she is in the opposite corner of the room. Presses his lips to her face without hesitation. I would be mad as A. But if the scenario went more like: A: "I'm tired and i…

It's not 'asking in good faith' if you ignore what was described and substitute in some completely different sequence of events that was not.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#266

Post by Zikes » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:52 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #216

ryandrake wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the topics that come up from time to time on HN, this one is pretty much unique in that there is strictly one point of view acceptable to put forward, and every other one is guaranteed to get you instantly flag-killed under the guise of "wanting high quality discussion". If I valued my Internet Points, I'd just steer clear of these altogether and go click through to a React vs. Angular discussion instead.

That's not true at all, as anyone who skims through the last few days' threads on the topic can easily see. The one thing that ideologically committed HN readers all seem to agree on is that the community is full of (and the mods secretly in league with) their enemies. If you were in our shoes you'd find it as surreal as I do how consistently we hear this from all sides. The sincerity is similar in all cases, but obv…

Maybe the flagging/downvoting system should be revisited, then. It seems like dissenting opinions are simply downvoted rather than challenged out in the open, as they should be. This means that discussions turn into a single-sided affair, as the other side simply flag kills their dissenters until only one opinion is visible.

I don't mind downvotes much, but it's hard to feel like I'm contributing to a worthwhile discussion if my responses are hidden and my ability to reply is removed.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#267

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #266

dang wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all, as anyone who skims through the last few days' threads on the topic can easily see. The one thing that ideologically committed HN readers all seem to agree on is that the community is full of (and the mods secretly in league with) their enemies. If you were in our shoes you'd find it as surreal as I do how consistently we hear this from all sides. The sincerity is similar in all cases, but obv…

Maybe the flagging/downvoting system should be revisited, then. It seems like dissenting opinions are simply downvoted rather than challenged out in the open, as they should be. This means that discussions turn into a single-sided affair, as the other side simply flag kills their dissenters until only one opinion is visible. I don't mind downvotes much, but it's hard to feel like I'm contributing to a worthwhile disc…

I'm not sure what to tell you because we have such wildly differing perceptions. The threads I'm seeing have a lot of different points of view in them—fundamentally disparate points of view with tons of disagreement.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#268

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

emmab wrote: post #223

throwaway055 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to be able to touch someone without asking every time? Ask them permission for that! "Hey is it ok if I touch your arms and back without asking in the future?" Sorry but this is just absurd. Courtship doesn't (and will never) work that way. Proposing that standard for human contact implies a lot of negative things about how all of us have conducted our relationships, about how all of our families and parents m…

> Sorry but this is just absurd. Courtship doesn't (and will never) work that way. Im a woman and it works well for me. Do you have a specific technical reason for thinking it wont work? > Proposing that standard for human contact implies a lot of negative things about how all of us have conducted our relationships Saying explicit communication is useful and best-practice is not saying that everyone who doesn't do it…

[deleted]

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#269

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #240

dang wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all, as anyone who skims through the last few days' threads on the topic can easily see. The one thing that ideologically committed HN readers all seem to agree on is that the community is full of (and the mods secretly in league with) their enemies. If you were in our shoes you'd find it as surreal as I do how consistently we hear this from all sides. The sincerity is similar in all cases, but obv…

Hey, dang, I agree mods in any public forum have a thankless job, and there will always be people assuming you're part of whatever conspiracy they think exists to censor them--it goes with the territory. You guys do your best to keep this place troll-free, and because of that, HN seems to be, for most topics, one of the last bastions of civil discussions left on the net. I'm sure it's why a lot of us keep coming back…

That's a good analysis but somehow you (seem to?) end up at the wrong conclusion that the community has a single norm about this. What I see is a deeply divided community. The hopeful aspect (maybe) is that it's (perhaps) inching its way into more substantive discussion across those divides. That's a capacity the community has to build extremely slowly. The flagging phenomena that people are observing in recent threads are both a sign of this and integral to it.

There are exceptions, but most of the comments being flagged contain some element that is destructive of thoughtful conversation. Having those be marked as beyond the community's tolerance—and I mean 'tolerance' literally, as in, 'more than this will cause the nervous system to go into overwhelm'—is critical to de-escalating the remainder of the discussion enough that people can disagree without ceasing to hear each other.

The important thing to realize is that most flagged comments are not being flagged purely because of the point of view they express. In most cases they add a little extra something—or maybe a lot of extra something—and there are other, unflagged comments that express similar points of view, just more thoughtfully. In most cases, if the flagged commenter got calm enough to explain their point of view more neutrally, the odds of getting flagged would be less. (Inveterate trolling is also a thing, of course, but rarer.) They're welcome to do that and rejoin the land of the living at any time.

It does tend to require some work of self-reflection, though, to avoid getting flagged straightaway again. Most elements that result in flags are things the commenter was unaware of, but which land rather abrasively with the reader. The work is to develop some awareness of what those things are and then avoid them. For bonus points one can consciously replace them with something indicating respect for the opposing point of view or person. That can often be something quite small.

It is true that the ideological distribution of the flagged comments is skewed, but that's a separate question. And there are flagged and moderated comments on every side of the issue.

Re: Shedding Light on the “Black Box of Inappropriateness”

#270

Post by Lazare » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:03 AM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #82

jacquesm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tell someone to leave (NOW!) after they indicate they want to sleep in your bedroom when they've been offered the couch and then they forcibly kiss you that is in fact sexual assault, in fact even if none of the former had happened it would still be sexual assault. Force => assault. When someone has sex with another person without their permission it is rape .

I'm by no means a burly red-blooded gentleman, but I can't think of any example from my previous relationships that did not start with either myself or the other making a move which could later have been construed as assault. Of course adding context to all those situations, it's easy to see that I or the recipient would in all probability welcome the advance, and so it is not assault, however the fine line between "…

> I can't think of any example from my previous relationships that did not start with either myself or the other making a move which could later have been construed as assault.

That's funny, I can't think of any examples from my past which could be construed as assault. And I rather doubt you can either; implicit consent is still consent.

> Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading

I think that's quite an absurd conclusion. How do we jump from "don't kiss people who don't want to be kissed" to "obtain a written legal waiver"? That's like going "you shouldn't break into someone's house...so you need a written waiver before entering, even if they're literally walking next to you and offering you a drink", because maybe you've misread the situation, and when they said "come on in, but mind the dog" they meant "go away"?

In the real world body language and conversational hints make is very clear what's going on in most cases, and in a small minority of cases when those prompts are misread, there will be a clear "no", and then you apologise and move on.

"Then I went into my own bedroom but Dave followed me there, and that’s when he first propositioned to sleep with me. I said no. I reminded Dave that he knew my then-boyfriend and that we’d just talked about him earlier that night. At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me..."

Can you honestly read that and, taking the account at face value, go "wow, Dave was just making an honest mistake; he should have been more careful and asked for a written waiver before he forcibly tried to kiss a resisting woman who had repeatedly told him no and was in the process of evicting him due to his inappropriate advances"? Really? Truly? That's your takeaway here?

The problem here, as described, isn't that he didn't get her consent in writing, its that there was no consent at all. These are not comparable things!